


One of a Kind Original

by Dawnwind



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Fantasy, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:27:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9997613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: First published in the Bistocon 2016 zine. Bodie's seeing double and then multiple variations of Doyle.





	

It was one of those rain slicked, foggy nights were the elements seem intent on burrowing under collars, the edges of boots and up under hats, drenching human kind. The air was weighed down with water, so saturated that breathing was a strain. There was a thickness, a wariness that filled Bodie with a strange lethargy. 

_He shouldn’t have had that last Newcastle._ He was drunk. Nothing more.

Shoving the collar of his leather jacket close around his neck, Bodie started down the road to where he’d parked the Capri. The dark shapes of buildings wavered and stretched in front of his eyes, his head swimming.

Unintentional pun. He grinned to himself, hanging onto a lamppost for balance, rain sluicing down his face, sticking his fringe to his forehead. He’d expected Doyle all evening—where the hell had he gone? Was it any wonder Bodie’d got pissed, with no-one to share the beer with him? 

He peered blearily along the lane—where was the bloody car? Hadn’t he left it…?

Ah, he’d gone right when he should have turned left at the street sign. Bodie re-oriented himself, took a step and ploughed into an indistinct figure in the gloaming.

Mop of wild curls, dripping into a soggy tartan scarf, narrow hips clad in denim.

“Ray!” Bodie cried, grasping his partner’s arms. “Where the hell’ve you been?” He turned his friend around with a grin.

“Get yer ‘ands off me.” The man shoved Bodie back against rough brick, cocking his fist to strike.

Bodie deflected the blow, flummoxed. “Doyle!” he retorted, but this close, the lamppost providing illumination, he realised his mistake. The face was Ray’s, but _not quite._ The same exotic eyes, on a slant, like a sprite. Ray’s wide planed, high cheekbones.

No misaligned right zygomatic bone. No chipped tooth. This was a flawless Doyle, a façade without the slight imperfections that made him who he was. 

“Who’d d’you think you are?” the doppelganger snarled, holding his fist in front of Bodie’s nose with intent to harm. Water dripped down his face from the charcoal skies, obscuring his outlines but never erasing the eerie sameness of his features.

“My mistake.” Bodie would have backed up but he was leaving a layer of leather jacket on the brick as it was. “You resemble someone I know…”

“Don’ know him well enough, then, yeah?” he growled, looking over his shoulder as if expecting back-up.

Bodie sensed another man—no, two. Now three more. Possibly a gang. He hunched, gearing up for a drubbing, when a set of twins stepped into the cone of light. Then more.

Doyle’s twins. Or more precisely, twins of his doppelganger. Quadruple copies of the same.

Each had identical features: tilted green eyes, long, broad nose flaring at the base. A sensual mouth with a full, smooth lower lip. 

Doyle’s face, with minor variations on a theme. One man had his hair military short with crispy clipped sideburns and the straight-backed stance of a Navy man, not Ray’s languid slouch. The bloke beside him wore his hair swept over his right ear with a rigid part on the left and a ferocious mustache winged out almost to his flared cheekbones.

There was one with spectacles and mutton-chops, which only emphasized the sweep of Ray Doyle’s wide cheekbones and fae eyes. Another had a cap smashed down to his forehead, a pencil thin ‘stach like a scar above his upper lip.

Bodie sucked in a breath, sliding along the wall until he came to the gap between buildings. The men gathered, one upon another, completely silent. Not a single foot splashed in a puddle. No sound of a footfall at all. 

A crowd with Ray’s face but not his soul. 

_This was not him._

“Where did you come from?” Bodie asked sternly, shoring up his inner grit. He was a trained agent, one-time mercenary. This was weird, mad, even—and he was alone against an army of –what did he call them? Copies? Clones? But he had wits and strength.

_He could do this._

“Who d’you think I am?” the first one, the copy most similar to Ray Doyle, demanded belligerently. “Someone else? Someone special?”

“A mate,” Bodie said carefully. What was his—their—motivation? Why the threatening attitude? “A partner.”

“Oh,” he said, and the word rippled through the throng of men still emerging out of the downpour.

Bodie shuddered, and not because of the icy rain dripping down his spine. That sound was the moan of ancient beings rising out of a grave. 

“Your partner?” one mocked. He canted a sharp boned hip suggestively, eyes hidden behind mirrored aviator glasses.

Bodie could see his own eyes reflected in Ray’s face. He took a step to the left, thinking to duck into the alley. He was free yet the copies pressed closer, enveloping him.

“More than a partner, yeah?” the bloke wearing jeans and Ray’s beaded Indian belt guessed. “A lover?”

“No.” Bodie put both hands on his waist, acting strong while something deep inside—a barrier-- was crumbling. An obstacle he’d never scaled, or even acknowledged. “We work together.”

The phrase echoed through the crowd, a wave of incredulity. The laugh that followed started low and increased in volume until Bodie wanted to cover his ears. What were they playing at?

“Just work together,” the first one –Bodie couldn’t call him the original, that was Ray—taunted. “Kiss him.”

“Kiss him. Kiss him.” The sibilant chorus slithered like bacon frying in a pan.

_“Bodie!”_

He jerked at the sound of his voice. Which one had said it? Which one recognized him for who he was?

“Bodie!” 

More forceful this time, accompanied by a pain in his upper thigh. Bodie searched the crowd but they were dispersing, dissolving into the steady rain.

“Wha…?”

~~**~~

Doyle snorted derisively and aimed another gentle kick at Bodie’s thigh. “Wake up! You’re on me door mat.”

“Wasn’t asleep.” Disoriented, Bodie peered up at his partner. He was still half in the other realm, surrounded by--

“I beg to differ, you were snoring.” Doyle leaned over him to slide the key into the lock.

“Ray!” Bodie sprang up so suddenly Doyle toppled backwards, nearly falling down the narrow flight of stairs. Bodie caught him around the waist, pulling Ray into the protective circle of his arms.

He could hear the voices chanting, their command so loud that he was sure Doyle must hear it, too. Doyle stared at him, eyes wide and wary, as if seeing someone he hadn’t expected. 

_An imposter perhaps, or a new version of an old friend._

Bodie didn’t think, throwing out any sensible caution with the baby in the bath water, and kissed _his_ Doyle. Hard. On the lips. The clash of their teeth reverberated inside his skull as he was sucked into Doyle by a startled whoosh of breath. 

Doyle flowed inside him, filling every dark corner, inflating him like a helium balloon. They kissed again, and again—every version of William Bodie and Raymond Doyle finding love in a familiar friend.

“Wondered—“ Doyle huffed a ragged breath, the keys clutched in his fist jangling discordantly. He grinned self-consciously, unable to complete the unlocking due to the position he was in. 

With Doyle snugged up against his hip with his left arm, Bodie snatched the keys and unlocked the front door. “Wondered what?” Bodie asked, sure he was floating a few inches above the floor. 

Doyle towed him into the flat with the goofiest grin Bodie had ever seen on that beloved, imperfect face. “Wondered when,” Doyle said, his eyes crinkled shut with delight. “If.”

“Yeah.” Bodie pushed him to the ghastly gold flocked wall paper to look at him, see the man he’d been expecting to see. Doyle’s skin glistened, speckled with raindrops. Bodie touched a fingertip to his late evening whiskery cheek, running it lightly up to the misshapen lump below the right eye. “Had to make sure.” Happiness warred with leftover confusion under his breast bone.

This was real. This was the two of them. Kissing.

 _Maybe they were both dreaming?_

Doyle’s smile softened, his eyes going tender. “What’s happened?” His body seemed to fit exactly with Bodie’s. 

There was no way Bodie could explain the prophetic, disconcerting dream. It _had_ been a dream, right? Not some recycled script from an old Doctor Who episode? “Waited for you at the pub,” he said instead.

“Got caught up in last minute paperwork,” Doyle explained, unwinding the soggy scarf from around his neck. “The Lyric case. Cowley wanted the financials and phone records before he met with the head of Companies House tomorrow.”

“I was drinking. Saw a bloke going past the window and ran out,” Bodie started. Or had he? Had the entire thing been a dream or was that one single man—the Not-Doyle—real? “Like you. Curls…” He twined his fingers around a wet lock of hair. “Slender build but with shoulders…” Such a broad expanse of chest under the rain-splattered green t-shirt. “Called out your name.” He’d felt like a berk when the lad turned around. Probably sixteen, if he was a day. Barely shaving. How could Bodie have made such a mistake?

“Bodie, it was dark, raining. You—“ Doyle smiled, leaning his cheek against Bodie’s wrist. “We’ve all done the same.”

 _Ray understood._ “As long as I haven’t gone round the bend.”

“Wouldn’t go that far,” Doyle scoffed and nipped at Bodie’s lips, soothing the self-recriminations. “I see you, even when you’re not there. Because I wish you were.”

Bodie nodded, the sensation of Ray’s mouth on his a narcotic he never wanted to withdraw from. The kiss turned passionate as Bodie slid his palm under Ray’s shirt to the flat of his abdomen.

“Bloody hell!” Doyle roared, shoving him away. “Your hands are like ice and we’re both all wet.”

Bodie chuckled. Nothing could discourage him now. He had Ray. Really had him—as Ray had him. “Want to dry off?” he asked, shucking his dripping leather jacket. “Or fancy a hot shower?”

“Since we’re already wet,” Doyle shrugged with an enticingly naughty chuckle. “Hot, with room for two.”

He dashed off, removing clothes as he went.

Bodie’d recognise that round arse anywhere.

FIN


End file.
